Saturday, December 28, 2013

Well, we've finally come to the end of a pretty terrible year for the city of Toronto. Ice storms, floods, crack cocaine. But 2013 was actually a pretty wonderful year for the Toronto Dreams Project. I launched ten brand new dreams, started the Toronto Historical Jukebox, teamed up with the AGO, and published a whole whack of blogposts — both here and over at Spacing. Now, as the year winds down, I've got the perfect opportunity to be completely self-indulgent and look back at some of the posts I had the most fun writing in 2013. And you've got the perfect opportunity to catch any of the best stuff you might have missed over the course of the last twelve months. I've picked my favourite dozen stories — some of them are also the most popular; some are just personal faves. But hopefully you'll enjoy them all. And have a wonderful New Year.

Here we go:

How Napoleon Bonaparte Is Indirectly Responsible For One Of The Best Walking Trails in Toronto

One of my very favourite places in Toronto is the Mast Trail. It's in Rouge Park on the very eastern edge of the city, right on the border with Pickering. The forests there are absolutely gorgeous. So beautiful, in fact, that Rouge Park is slated to become a national park. But the natural beauty is only part of why I love it so much. It also has a rich heritage stretching back into prehistory, through the days of the First Nations and the first French explorers into the reign of the British Empire. In this post from February, I told one of my favourite Rouge Park stories: how the Mast Trails owes its beginning to the war with Napoleon.

Toronto ♥s Stalingrad

I've long been fascinated by Canadian attitudes toward Communism. In particular, the way public opinion and official government policy has swung wildly back and forth on the subject. Some days, the Prime Minster is trying to have the leader of the Canadian Communist Party assassinated. Other days, Eaton's department stores are putting together window displays glorifying Stalin. So I was intrigued when I stumbled across a mention of a mostly forgotten chapter from Toronto's history: the time we "adopted" the Soviet city of Stalingrad. It was during the Second World War, after one of the bloodiest battles in history. And the post I wrote about it in March is still one of my favourites from 2013.

Toronto's First Great Baseball Team — the old-timey Toronto Baseball Club of 1887

Back in April, baseball fans in Toronto were full of optimism. The Blue Jays had just traded for some of the biggest stars in the sport. Las Vegas was declaring our team to be World Series favourites. So I seized the opportunity to write about some of the rich history that baseball enjoys in Toronto, which stretches back to about a century before our city got our first major league team. Our first championship came all the way back in 1887 thanks to a team filled with memorable characters and superstars. I wrote about them in this post on Opening Day.

Lee's Palace Before It Was Lee's Palace

My most popular post of 2013 was about what Lee's Palace looked like before it became Lee's Palace. The building — which is now one of most famous music venues in Toronto — started out all the way back in the spring of 1919. It was a silent movie theatre back then, designed by an architect who would make his name building some of the most beautiful modern masterpieces from Detroit's golden age. The post about Lee's has been racking up page views since I first published it back in May.

The Story Behind the Sakura Blossoms of High Park

This was a particularly good year for the cherry blossoms in High Park. They burst into full bloom just in time for one of the very first weekends of gorgeous weather we got to enjoy this Spring. Thousands upon thousands of people flooded to the slope above Grenadier Pond to take a look, snap some Instagram pics, or have a picnic under the beautiful pink and white flowers. Few of them, I suspect, knew the history behind the trees. I certainly didn't until I got home and Googled it. The trees were a gift from the people of Tokyo, commemorating Toronto's welcoming of Japanese-Canadians during one of the darkest episodes in Canadian history. I told the story in a post I published during that weekend of warm weather back in May.

A Brief History of the Pigeons of Toronto

This might very well be my favourite post of the entire year. Pretty much ever since I started the Dreams Project, I'd been thinking about the pigeons in our city. Where the hell they all came from — and why urban pigeons here look like urban pigeons everywhere else. I finally dug into the research for the post this summer, and used it as an opportunity to also explore the history of the wild Passenger Pigeons who used to live here. There were billions of them in North America when the first Europeans arrived. When Toronto was first founded, they flew above our city in flocks so huge they could block out of the sun for days on end. And yet, by the early 1900s, there wasn't a single bird left on Earth. It's one of the most disturbing — and, I think, most important — stories from the history of our city. I wrote about it in this post in June.

A Bird's-Eye Tour of Toronto in the Early 1930s

Some of my favourite posts to write are the ones where I take an old map or an archival photo and add a legend to it. That's what did with this aerial photo of the city taken back in the early 1930s. It was a fascinating period in the history of Toronto. As I point out in the post, many of the city's most beautiful landmarks opened in the few years leading up to this photo:
everything from Maple Leaf Gardens to Union Station to what was, at the
time, the tallest skyscraper in the British Empire. Many of them would remain our most striking new architectural icons for years to come — the Great Depression and the Second World War meant that most other major building projects would be put on hold. It's been one of the most popular posts on the blog since I published it back in July.

Simcoe's Vision for Toronto: A City So Awesome It Would Undo The American Revolution

Since Toronto was founded only about 200 years ago, we've got a much closer connection to our roots than many of the cities in the rest of the world. We're particularly lucky to have records kept by the founders of our metropolis. Elizabeth Simcoe's diary is one my favourite Toronto documents, telling the story of the earliest days of the building of our city, while she and her family lived in a tent on the beach by the lake. But this post is about a letter written by her husband, John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant Governor who founded Toronto back in 1793. He wrote it to a famous British scientist before he'd even left England for Canada — and in it, he lays out his vision for what he hoped Toronto would become. As I say in the post, "His plan, in short, was to make our city and our province so undeniably
amazing that Americans couldn't help but realize how terrible America
was by comparison. They would voluntarily give up their silly notions of
independence and beg to be let back into the Empire." I published this post in August.

Star Trek & Nathan Phillips Square

Toronto, as it turns out, has a particularly strong connection to science-fiction. And that might not be too surprising when you take a look at City Hall: that alien modernist masterpiece built in the 1960s. In fact, it's turned up in the world of Star Trek on two different occasions. Once in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and once in a weird Star Trek comic book. The post I wrote about it has been one of the most popular posts on the site since I published it in September.

Toronto's Lucky Lion: The Story of One of Our Most Famous Early Monuments

As I mentioned above, the Toronto Dreams Project teamed up with Art Gallery of Ontario in 2013. I wrote three new dreams about Torontonian artists with work in the AGO's Canadian Collection. One of then was Francis Loring. She and her partner Florence Wyle were two of the most interesting figures I've come across since I started the project. They were both sculptors who moved here from the States in the early 1900s. Their home became the closest thing our city had to the Bohemian art salons of Paris. They became good friends with the Group of Seven and Dr. Frederick Banting. And their work can still be found all over the city. Loring's crowning achievement was the so-called "Lucky Lion" at the entrance to the QEW. Once, it was once of our city's most famous landmarks; today, it's mostly forgotten. And the story of how that happened seemed particularly important in September, while Toronto debated what should be done with the glowing neon disks of the Sam the Record Man sign.

A.Y. Jackson Goes To War — The Group of Seven on the Western Front

Another one of the artists I wrote a dream about for the AGO was the Group of Seven's A.Y. Jackson. He, too, has a fascinating history. I was particularly interested by his experiences during the First World War. He would eventually become one of the most famous artists in Canadian history, but back then his modernist work was being dismissed as meaningless rubbish. He enlisted, fought on the frontlines at Ypres, and was wounded before finally being saved: he was commissioned as an official war artist. His paintings of the Western Front are hauntingly beautiful — and an amazing piece of Canadian history. I wrote about Jackson's time in Europe and those incredible paintings in this post from November.

The Torontonian Roots of Doctor Who — the Canadian Behind the Legendary TV Show

On a completely nerdy personal note, I'm also going to remember about 2013 as the year I discovered how awesome Doctor Who is. I've been completely obsessed with the show it ever since. (I even write about every new episode over at The Little Red Umbrella). So I was stunned and thrilled to learn that the quintessentially British show was actually created by a Torontonian, Sydney Newman. And that he played an extremely important role in the history of Canadian film and television. He ran the NFB and was the head of Drama for the CBC; he's even the guy who put Hockey Night In Canada and the Grey Cup on television for the very first time. I looked forward to writing a post about Newman for most of the year, and finally published this post during Doctor Who's 50th anniversary last month.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The first post I ever wrote on this blog was about the Torontonian writer Morley Callaghan (and the time he punched Ernest Hemingway right in the face). I've come back to him from time to time. Earlier this week, I was listening to a CBC "Rewind" podcast about his life, which you can stream online here. It features an old interview he did with Michael Enright in November of 1974, which included a little snippet about Callaghan's love of Canadian winters. He was famous for it — and for his daily walks through Rosedale with his dog. (In fact, that's the subject of what I suspect is the most beautifully sad plaque in Toronto.)

Since this year's winter has finally just arrived, I thought I'd share a snippet of his thoughts (complete, unfortunately, with his dated pronoun usage):

"The other thing about winter is... that on a winter night, if it's not too cold — now I'm not pretending to be a lover of those harsh winter winds — but on a lovely winter night when there is snow and when there is sort of unbroken snow, I love the cities. I love the cities when they're absolutely snow-covered and there's a kind of unearthly winter calm about them. And I feel a curious sense of peace and ease with myself and you can walk... and it's great, you know, when you yourself can break the snow. And somehow or other you get a sense of well-being in that kind of weather that you don't get in the hot summer...

"The winter is in the Canadian. It's in his heart. It's in his imagination, even when he grouses about it and damns it and so on."

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That photo, amazingly, is Bloor Street West in the winter of 1910. Right near High Park. (Which I found via the Toronto Archives.)

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

In 1851, the year this painting was painted, Toronto was beginning to boom. It had been less than 60 years since the first British soldiers showed up to clear the ancient forest and make way for the new capital of Upper Canada, but the population was already skyrocketing. By the time of this painting, there were something like 30,000 people living in the city. The population had doubled over the last decade and would double again over the next. It was truly the dawning of a new age: in 1851 we started building our very first railroad. In fact, the City's own website uses this year as a defining line in the history of Toronto: between "A Provincial Centre" and "An Industrializing City."

There were big new public buildings opening all over town. Some of them are still there today. Near King and Jarvis, the gorgeous St. Lawrence Hall had just opened, the city's main venue for concerts, political meetings and other public events. In 1851, it hosted an important anti-slavery gathering: the North American Convention of Colored Freemen, which included a speech by Frederick Douglass. Today, it's a National Historic Site. A block away, a new building had just been built at the St. Lawrence Market: it served as Toronto's City Hall for the next 50 years and can still be seen in the facade of the current Market. Far to the west on Queen Street, near Parkdale, the new Provincial "Lunatic Asylum" had recently begun taking its very first patients. It lasted all the way to the 1970s before we tore the beautiful old building down. It was in 1851 that the first in a series of brick walls was designed for the grounds. The patients were used as free labour to build them. A section of the walls survives to this day, on the eastern edge of what's now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Meanwhile, the Province of Canada had just become a real democracy. Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine had recently won an overwhelming majority on an election platform demanding the British government allow Canadians to make our own laws. They called it Responsible Government. Some of the Tories who opposed them were so pissed off they attacked the Parliament Buildings in Montreal, burned them to the ground, and threatened further violence. As a result, the capital was moved to Toronto. As 1851 began, Baldwin and LaFontaine were hard at work in our Parliament Buildings down on Front Street (where the CBC building is now). Their government would become known as "The Great Ministry." In a few short years, they brought in public education, a public postal service, an independent judiciary, our jury system, and our appeals system; they brought democratic reform to municipal governments and made sure anyone — not just the upper class — had access to the courts and could be appointed to the civil service. They also extended the right to vote — it wasn't just for property owners anymore — though, at the same time, they restricted that right to men only.

Despite all this change, we still remained an overwhelmingly British city: in 1851, 97% of Torontonians had been born in the British Isles or traced their ancestry there. It would be a long time before that changed: fifty years later, in 1901, the figure was still 92%.

But now, more than ever before, we were a particularly Irish city. Ireland had just been devastated by the Great Famine. More than a million people died in just a few years; many others fled. Tens of thousands of Irish refugees flooded Toronto in the years leading up to 1851 — at one point during the terrible summer of 1847, there were more refugees in the city than non-refugees. Hundreds died of typhoid at the old General Hospital on the corner of King & John (where the TIFF Lightbox is now) and in the temporary fever sheds built out back. It was the beginning of a great wave of Irish immigration that changed the face of our city. Soon, we'd earn the nickname of the "Belfast of North America."

Toronto had always been a very Protestant town. In fact, for the first four decades of the city's history, Anglican ministers were the only ones allowed to perform marriage ceremonies. The Protestant Orange Order was immensely powerful — just like in Belfast — and they didn't hesitate to use that power against Catholics. Prejudice was rampant. In the few decades after 1851, as the city became home to ever-more Irish-Catholics, Toronto found itself dealing with some of the same sectarian violence that plagued Ireland. There would be dozens of riots between Protestants and Catholics before the end of the century.

But it was also a time of growing respect for diversity. Baldwin (an anglophone Protestant from Toronto) and LaFontaine (a francophone Catholic from Montreal) were helping to lay some of the early foundations of Canadian multiculturalism. They made Canada officially bilingual, opened Canadian ports to ships from all over the world, and challenged the exclusive privileges of the Protestant clergy. They took over King's College, an Anglican school in Toronto, severed its ties to the church, and turned it into the secular University of Toronto. Meanwhile, the city's first Catholic cathedral, St. Michael's, had just been consecrated at Church & Shuter. It would soon be joined by St. Michael's College, a Catholic school which would eventually also become part of U of T.

By the end of 1851, however, the era of Baldwin and LaFontaine was suddenly over. They had granted an amnesty to the rebels of 1837, allowing them to return from exile. For the first time in more than a decade, the old trouble-making former mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, was back at home living in Toronto. He was joined by other returning rebels — unsurprisingly, they were more radical than the moderate liberals (like Baldwin and LaFontaine) who had refused to take up arms. It didn't take long for Mackenzie to get elected to parliament and to cause problems for the Great Ministry. Baldwin and LaFontaine were relatively young — in their 40s — but they were already exhausted from years of political struggle and plagued by a variety of illnesses. (Most famously, Baldwin had been suffering from severe depression since the death of his wife 15 years earlier.) When one of Mackenzie's bills to overturn one of Baldwin's new laws got unexpectedly strong support, Baldwin resigned. LaFontaine wasn't far behind.

And so, as 1851 turned into 1852, the Province of Canada was in the hands of a new generation of political leaders. In the wake of the Great Ministry, people like George Brown and John A. Macdonald would rise to prominence. The fight for Responsible Government was over. Now, it was time to start down the road to Confederation.

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Image: it was an artist born in Germany who painted this painting. Augustus Köller had been raised in Düsseldorf and now lived in Philadelphia. He made his living off watercolours and lithographs. His work took him to cities all over North America. For this painting, he seems to have taken a vantage point looking out over the city from the ancient shore of the prehistoric Lake Iroquois, just north of Davenport Road now. The land up on top of the hill had long belonged to the city's elite — it's where many had their country estates. In fact, up on that hill right next to where Casa Loma is now, Robert Baldwin's family built the first Spadina House.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

So there's this story about Jacques Cartier. He was a French explorer, of course, one of the very first Europeans to ever come to Canada. At the end of his first trip here, he erected a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula, as a way of claiming the land for France. They say that's how he met Donnacona.

Donnacona was the Chief of Stadacona, a village around where Québec City is now. When the French erected their cross, they noticed that the Chief seemed kind of annoyed by it. So Cartier decided to trick him. The French made signs as if they wanted to trade with the Chief — and when Donnacona got close enough to their ship, they trapped him, forcing him and his two sons on board. Eventually, they came to an arrangement: the sons would sail with Cartier for France. They would learn French. And then, after the winter was over, they would return to the New World with Cartier — where they would be his guides

So that's what they did. In 1535, Cartier came back with the sons in tow. They showed him where the St. Lawrence was (he'd totally missed it on his first trip) and took him to Stadacona, their village. In fact, when Cartier heard their word for village, he thought they were talking about the entire area around them. Five hundred years later, we still call this place by the name Cartier put on his maps after hearing it from them: Canada.

Cartier was pretty excited. He had "discovered" the St. Lawrence. The whole point of his trip to the New World was to find a trade route to Asia. This giant river seemed like a promising lead. But for good reason, Donnacona and his sons didn't trust the explorer. So they stayed behind while he sailed further upriver.

It seems Cartier went too far. He was supposed to sail home for France before winter, but when the snows came and the river froze, he was still here. In fact, he and his men were trapped in a spot not far from Stadacona. They would be forced to stay there until spring.

This was very bad news. The Europeans weren't equipped to deal with a Canadian winter. They had no idea how to keep themselves alive. As the days dragged on, the men fell ill.

"The sickness broke out among us accompanied by the most extraordinary
symptoms," Cartier wrote. "For some lost all their strength, their legs became swollen
and inflamed, and all had their mouths so tainted that the gums rotted
away down to the roots of the teeth which nearly fell out. The disease
spread among the three ships to such an extent that in the middle of February, of the 110 men forming our company, there were not 10 in good
health."

They had scurvy. But the Frenchmen didn't know that; Europeans didn't understand the disease. So instead of being able to treat their illness, all Cartier and his men could do was to pray. And so they did.

"I gave orders for all to pray and to make orisons and have an image and figure of the Virgin Mary carried across the ice and snow and placed against a tree... and issued an order: that on the following Sunday mass should be said at that spot, praying the Virgin to be good enough to ask her dear son to have pity upon us. At that time, so many were down with the disease that we had almost lost hope of ever returning to France..."

It was Donnacona's sons who saved them. They knew all about scurvy and how to cure it: with a tea from boiled cedar boughs. While Cartier's dying men refused to drink it at first, they were eventually convinced. The first to try it felt better right away. After two or three cups, Cartier says the sailors were cured. Twenty-five men had died of the disease, but the rest were going to make it.

Cartier & Chief Donnacona

Cartier assumed it was his prayers that had done the trick. The quick recovery of his men, he wrote, "must clearly be ascribed to miraculous causes... God, in his infinite goodness and mercy, had pity upon us." It would be hundreds of years before European scientists figured out what caused scurvy and how to cure it. The big breakthrough didn't come until 1932. Those cedar boughs were full of vitamin C.

Cartier wasn't exactly grateful for what Donnacona's sons had done. He answered their kindness with more trickery. When spring came, he organized a great feast on board one of his ships. And he invited Donnacona, his sons, and some of the other Stadacona villagers to attend. They were reluctant and suspicious, but they came. As soon as they were on board, Cartier took them prisoner.

This time when Cartier sailed back to France, he had ten First Nations people with him: the kidnapped villagers and some children he'd been given as "gifts". Donnacona was presented to King François — he regaled the monarch with wondrous tales about the riches to be found in Canada. But no matter how much he begged and pleaded, he would never be allowed to return home to his friends and family. None of them would. We know for sure that nine of them died within a few short years. The tenth, a little girl, has disappeared from the historical record.

Cartier, on the other hand, did go back to Stadacona. When he got there, he lied about what had happened. He told the new Chief that Donnacona had passed away, but that the others were rich and happy. It didn't do any good, though. Built on a foundation of mistrust, the relationship between Cartier and the Iroquoians of Stadacona quickly deteriorated. Soon, they would be at war — the first of many between the French and Iroquois-speaking nations over the next 200 years.

Now, it's 2013. It has been 478 years since Cartier spent that winter on the St. Lawrence. The story of his relationship with Donnacona comes from a very different — and much more racist — time. A lot has changed over the last five centuries.

But maybe not as much as we settlers would like to think. After all, as absurd as it seems, it was the official policy of the Canadian government to forcibly remove First Nations children from their homes until very recently. The last residential school didn't close until 1996. The entire system was founded on the idea that the First Nations should be taken far away from their ancestral homes and forced to assimilate. They, like Donnacona and his sons, would be forced to learn French, or English, and to leave their own cultures behind. The aim, as one government official put it, was to "kill the Indian in the child." Frequently, the child was killed too. In the 1900s, children at residential schools died much like the villagers Cartier took to France in the 1500s did. Many were also physically and sexually abused, sterilized, and experimented on. To be fair, there was some progress over those 400 years: the mortality rate in residential schools wasn't 100%; it was more like 50% according to some estimates.

Thankfully, the Canadian government has finally stopped stealing children to be shipped off to school. In fact, a whole five years ago, the government admitted it was wrong. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in the House of Commons, even said these words: "assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm and has no place in our country."

Or, to be more precise, he said: "this policy of assimilation was wrong". Those are my italics, because it seems like a particularly important qualification given that many people, even some of those who believe in the sincerity of Harper's apology, still believe that his ultimate goal is the forced assimilation of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

Many people trace their concerns about Harper back to a man by the name of Tom Flanagan. He's one of Harper's former chiefs of staff, campaign managers, and writing partners. The Walrus once called him "The Man Behind Stephen Harper"; one former Reform Party colleague calls the two men intellectual and
philosophical "soulmates". In many circles, Flanagan is best known for his book First Nations? Second Thoughts, which lays out old colonial arguments in favour of assimilation. "Call it assimilation, call it integration,
call it adaptation, call it whatever you want: it has to
happen," he wrote in that book. And he followed it up
by claiming that assimilation is "historically inevitable," "now
largely accomplished, and will remain the basis of Canadian society."
(He is also known for his suggestion that Julian Assange "should be assassinated" and, according to The Walrus,
once had a book removed from an approved list of high school
textbooks because of "'racial, religious, and sex bias'
against women and Jews." More recently, he made national headlines after controversial comments questioning the idea of jail-time for people who view child pornography.)

Of course, just because Flanagan believes something doesn't necessarily mean Harper does. But since he rose to power, Harper's policies do seem to be following an assimilationist script. He has made it easier to break up reserve lands so they can be sold off
or leased for development. First Nations health care funding has
been cut. Overall spending per capita is falling too. The salaries of
federal bureaucrats are taking up more and more of what little money is
left. The housing crisis is getting worse.Just one year after he made his residential schools apology, Harper stood in front of the G20 and claimed in the face of 500 years of evidence to the contrary, that Canada has "no history of colonialism". His government echoed that claim again just a few weeks ago in the Throne Speech, praising Canadian pioneers for "forg[ing] an independent country where none would have otherwise existed." The government is currently refusing to release residential school documents to the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. They cut all funding for a database compiling information about hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous women. And when 144 countries voted in favour of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canada was one of the four countries who voted against it (although Harper did eventually back down and sign on). At the same time, giant omnibus bills like C-45 have gutted
environmental regulations, making it easier for oil and gas companies to
exploit ancestral lands — while making it harder for Indigenous
people to live off them.

Residential school students in the 1950s

In short, since he first came to power in 2006, Harper has already made it harder for the First Nations, Inuit and Métis to
maintain their unique and distinct cultures.

Meanwhile, the echoes of the forced assimilation that began with Cartier in 1534 are still being felt
in First Nations communities today, in cycles of poverty, violence, suicide, and substance abuse. As a result, more First Nations
children are "in care" now than ever before — more even than at the height of the residential school system.

Still, the Harper government seems to blame those problems on some kind of inherent cultural flaw rather than seeing them as the result of hundreds of years of brutal systemic discrimination. That attitude was evident in the federal government's reaction to the crisis in Attawapiskat. The Conservatives blamed the state of emergency on the reserve's leadership and tried to impose outside management. Never mind that Attawapiskat, like many reserves, was already co-managed by a federal bureaucrat — or that their audits are continually monitored by the government. A Federal Court declared the government's response to be "unreasonable". In fact, Canada's former Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, reported that there is too much oversight of spending on reserves. A study of First Nations audits found less evidence of fiscal wrongdoing on reserves than in the governments of the average Canadian province or municipality.

And yet, Harper's paternalistic, colonial ideas aren't limited to his own government and allies. The problem is much bigger than one Prime Minster or one political party. In fact, assimilationist arguments are considered to be remarkably mainstream. Both Conservative and Liberal federal governments — as well as some
provincial ones — have used Tom Flanagan as an expert witness in order
to oppose First Nations land claims in court. Before his child pornography comments, Flanagan was a frequent "expert" guest on news programs and wrote editorials for newspapers. His ideas are echoed not just by the rants of racist online commenters, but in the columns of some of Canada's most respected journalists.

Chelsea Vowel, the Métis writer and lawyer, recently compiled some examples of anti-Indigenous racism in the mainstream media, while pointing to a study that found the same arguments being made today as in 1869. "[W]e literally see the same arguments being made year after year after year," she writes. Distortions, half-truths and outright lies are repeated over and over again. And they've been successful in their attempts to sway public opinion. A recent poll found that 60% of Canadians believe, despite the evidence to the contrary, that "most of the problems of native peoples are brought on by themselves." That's up from 35% in 1989.

It seems that far too many 21st century Canadians see the First Nations, Inuit and
Métis in much the same way Cartier saw the Iroquoians of Stadacona back in the early 1500s: as
people who must be assimilated for their own good; as primitive
curiosities stuck in the past; as an obstacle to progress; as people with a culture colourful enough to parade before the King of France or at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, but with nothing more
important than that to offer the modern, European world.

Idle No More

III. IDLE NO MORE

Jacques Cartier wasn't the only European who came to Canada. He was, of course, followed by hundreds and then thousands and then millions more. And while there have always been plenty of settlers who saw Indigenous people in much the same way Cartier did — as "heathens" to be "civilized" — others saw things differently. In a new world they didn't entirely understand, some realized how much they could learn from the people who already lived here. The curative powers of cedar tea were just one contribution to a period of immense learning.

As John Ralston Saul points out in his book, A Fair Nation, some new Canadians didn't just see the First Nations and Inuit as peoples to be conquered; they saw them as civilizations worth engaging in a partnership. For 200 years, the fur trade was the foundation of the Canadian economy and the driving force behind European settlement in the northern half of the continent. Many newly arrived Canadians lived far from the growing cities of the east, in close quarters with the First Nations and the Inuit. From them, they learned how to live in this land: how to survive, how to travel, what crops to grow; they discovered shared values and new ideas. They were allies in business and allies in war. Some would form strong and lasting partnerships. Many even got married. In fact, it was the French government who first pushed the idea of intermarriage as a means of assimilation, but it backfired: many of the fur trappers who did get married chose to embrace Indigenous lifestyles and ideas. An entire new people came out of that period: the Métis.

So did an entirely new country. Canada would not be the nation it is today if it weren't for the contributions of Indigenous peoples — despite the myth of our having only two founding peoples: the English and the French. In fact, Saul goes as far as to say that many of the values we think of as modern, Canadian values — environmentalism, diversity, respect for the other — can be traced back to those centuries spent living with and learning from Indigenous peoples. He argues that Canada is, in a sense, a Métis nation. And that as progressive Canadians look for ways to embrace and support those values in the 21st century, it's important to be conscious of the debt those ideas owe to what Saul calls the "third pillar" of Canadian civilization.

Of course, there have always been Canadians who don't agree, who
don't share those values, and who see multiculturalism as a failure: an unnecessary and dangerous compromise by whatever the dominant "Canadian" culture happens to be at the time. Instead, they look to the example of those old monolithic European empires: one nation; one people; one culture. And so, they said we could never form a country
with the Québecois, that Catholics could never be trusted, that the Acadians needed to be expelled, that we needed a head tax on Chinese immigrants, that we
needed to jail and deport all Canadians of Japanese descent and
Canadians of Ukrainian descent, too. The day Canada became
a democracy, they claimed we were betraying our superior British heritage and handing the country over to minorities. They were so angry, they burned the
parliament buildings down. Many of our darkest days as a nation have come when too many of us agreed with those voices; our greatest days, when we've seen those voices for what they are — rooted in ignorance and fear — and we chose to stand up against them.

For centuries now, when it comes to the question of our relationship with the First Nations, Inuit and Métis, far too many of us have been listening to those voices. They are still there today, saying that the "Indian problem" is too complicated to be solved, that it's a cultural issue and a foregone conclusion — that there's nothing to be done but admit defeat and force Indigenous peoples to assimilate.

They're wrong.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763

In fact, there already is a plan. The 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples — launched by the Conservative Mulroney government and completed during the Liberal Chrétien years — spent five years and more than $50 million
dollars doing research, meeting with experts and consulting with the public before coming up with a realistic path forward. It identified problems with the current reserve system and proposed solutions. It called for a new level of Indigenous government, a temporary rise in spending, and shared resource development based on the legal, nation-to-nation relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous peoples. That relationship was first established by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, was enshrined in the Constitution in 1982, and has been confirmed by one Supreme Court case after another since then. In 2005, Paul Martin's government even took the first step forward, negotiating the Kelowna Accord. But when Harper came to power, he cancelled it. Then he began to dismantle the existing system without building an improved system to replace it.

And so, last winter, his government's actions were met by Idle No More. It was the giant omnibus budget bill, C-45, that sparked it. Chief Spence went on hunger strike. There were protests at shopping malls, marches in the streets, railroads shut down, and construction sites occupied. The movement's website calls it "a peaceful revolution to honour Indigenous sovereignty." That alone would make it a worthwhile movement — the Canadian government has already gone far too long without living up to its legal, constitutional and moral obligations in its dealings with the Indigenous nations. But the website adds, "And to protect the land & water," which hints at the implications Idle No More has for all Canadians. Even the most selfish settler stands to benefit.

For one thing, Harper's attacks on the rights of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis are part of a larger attempt to remove any and all obstacles to "resource development" — including large-scale extraction projects like the tar sands, fracking and open-pit mines. Bill C-45 was one more skirmish in that fight, a fight progressive Canadians have been losing. The Conservatives have gutted environmental regulations, denounced environmental advocates as radicals and terrorists, muzzled government scientists, slashed funding for environmental projects and sidestepped parliamentary oversight. That leaves the unique constitutional land rights of Indigenous peoples as one of the strongest and most effective checks on the Harper government's unprecedented power. Last year, the Financial Post reported that the First Nations were on "the biggest winning streak in Canadian legal history": 170 victories in the courts. At a time when climate change is becoming an ever-greater challenge, the importance of those land rights is a truly global concern.

"It is our responsibility to protect Mother Earth, to protect
the land
for non-natives too," one former Mi'kmaq Chief, Susan Levi-Peters, said just a few weeks ago. "My people are speaking up for everyone... People care
about the water. People care about the environment. This isn't just a
native issue." And it's true. A recent poll found that 62% of Canadians support a moratorium on fracking — 66% of people in Atlantic Canada. But it was Levi-Peters' Nation, Elsipogtog, who organized a peaceful, weeks-long protest against fracking on their ancestral lands in New Brunswick. They were the ones who drew attention to the issue, they were the ones at risk when the RCMP's camouflaged snipers moved in, and they are the ones who now, in the wake of the violence that followed, find themselves the subject of one racist media commentary after another.

Meanwhile, Indigenous people make up the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population and are younger
than the rest of Canada, too: nearly half are under the age of 25.
Ensuring those young people have access to the same opportunities and
educational advantages as other young Canadians isn't just the moral
thing to do (although it is) or the fiscally responsible thing to do
(although it is), it will also unleash a vast source of human potential:
new doctors and nurses, new artists and teachers, new ideas and new
advances. Then there's the economic argument: one study [PDF] found those young people could be adding $400 billion to Canada's GDP before the end of the next decade.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

But Idle Is No More is about more than that, too. The land and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples were enshrined in the same constitution as the rights of every Canadian — a successful attack on one of those rights makes it that much easier for other rights to be undermined or discarded. The Harper government has made no secret of its feelings when it comes to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms‚ ranging from ambivalence to outright contempt. Their attempts to undermine its importance come as no surprise and have ramifications for everyone who lives in this country.

Idle No More cuts to the core questions about what kind of Canada we want to live in. A Canada where all citizens are treated fairly? Where everyone has a voice? Where we seize the opportunity to learn from each other? Most Canadians are fiercely proud of our history of immigration and see our diversity as a strength. But this country is also home to scores of unique Indigenous cultures — cultures found nowhere else on earth — and for far too long, we've essentially ignored them, seeing their extinction as an inevitable side effect of progress. Or as a tragedy already complete.

But it's not too late. We still have a unique opportunity in Canada. And a unique history to guide us. While Idle No More has lots to offer politically, it's also a reminder of that cultural opportunity. If we, settler Canadians, want to take advantage of it, it will require our active effort. The true story of our nation's history — and of the current relationship between our federal and provincial leaders and the First Nations, Inuit and Métis — is not one the government has ever been anxious to tell. They won't do the work for us. We must also be idle no more.

"Canada will not crumble and fall apart," Vowel writes, "if we become more honest and
aware of the history of these lands and the incredible diversity of
contributions by peoples from all over the world." She's right. In fact, Canada is at much greater risk if we don't.

In 1535, Jacques Cartier was too arrogant to realize how much the European world
stood to benefit from Indigenous peoples. Nearly 500 years later,
Stephen Harper and far too many other Canadians are making the very
same mistake. We can — and we must — actively make the decision to see our country in a different light. To turn our backs on the worldview of Cartier and of Harper. To learn the unique lessons of our own history — and to make sure we never repeat the same mistakes again.